“You Perpetuate Evil By Writing About It.”
So, do we burn the great works of literature, fine art, music, or the bible to the ground?
I’m most comfortable in the not quite dark. It’s the shades pulled down low, the covers over the head, the door left open barely a slip, a crack. Light exists but it’s soft around the edges, it’s close but not blaring. The first movie I remember seeing in a theater was The Shining when I was five. I’ve seen more bodies in bags and on sidewalks before I was ten than the whole of my lifetime. I’ve sat in the same room with needles and burnt pipes. I’ve cowered in another room while my mother’s head was smashed into coffee tables until her face took on the carvings in the wood.
I’m a light sleeper. I sleep on top of sheets, never between them. One foot off the bed, ready to run.
I read a study once where people who have been exposed to trauma at a young age take comfort in horror movies and the macabre because it’s familiar. The screams are background noise, a dull tinning in one’s ear. The blood is the sauce on a pot coming to a boil. The bodies are a kind of peace, of quiet. I can’t sleep in silence. I can’t sleep in big houses with too many windows and doors. Romantic comedies terrify me because the tidiness of them is violent, unfamiliar.
